1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic scale device which incorporates a printing function for printing out information such as item weight, price, and the like.
2. Related Art
Recently, electronic scales having electronic cash register functions in addition to the conventional functions of electronic scales such as measuring weight, calculating, displaying, printing prices, and the like, have come into wide use in supermarkets and stores. This type of electronic scale is used instead of the cash register (referred to as "ECR" hereafter) in retail stores (butcher shops and the like) where product weight is dealt with.
In order to attract new customers, while at the same time maintaining regular customers, ECR or point-of-sale (POS) systems have been developed which have a customer information management system function for printing discount coupons in accordance with each customer's total purchase amount, and have been adopted in many stores. Recently, this type of system has become very popular. In this customer information management system, membership cards are printed for member customers. If a member purchases items using the membership card, discount coupons corresponding to the total purchase amount recorded during a fixed period are mailed to the member. Later, when the customer presents the discount coupons to the store clerk, a discount or a refund (referred to as rebate hereafter) is given based on the value of the discount coupons.
When the conventional customer-control system is adopted, however, work such as writing customer addresses for mailing at fixed periods, and printing out service coupons corresponding to the total purchase amount, is necessary. In the ECR or the POS system, the work mentioned above is conducted by utilizing the standard printer connected to a computer installed as a store controller. Printers designed for printing address labels for customer information management systems have been developed and are already in use in some stores.
The electronic scales described at the beginning of this section have been developed so as to have a customer information management system function as same as the ECR and the POS system.
With the standard electronic scales having a customer information management system function, work such as writing customer addresses for mailing, and printing out service coupons corresponding to the total purchase amount, is necessary. The work is generally carried out manually because the number of customers is much less than that of customers of the ECR or the POS system, and so using the expensive computer above mentioned or the printer specialized for printing address-labels is not practical. Therefore, an electronic scale device with a standard printer or an address-label printer connected to a store controlled computer has not yet been introduced.